Thoughts On Revolution In The Arab World
When talk turns to the possibilities of revolution through the Arab Middle East, critics will often point out that the cure seems worse than the disease. Islamist thugs lurk in the shadows, ready to pick up the pieces almost everywhere throughout the region.
Replacing brutal and sclerotic dictatorships with Khomeinist or Taliban-style revolutions hardly seems to be an improvement. Where modern police states now hold sway with torture chambers and medieval dungeons, who is to say that the revolutionaries who take over the state will not use such infrastructure to their own purposes? Throughout the Arab Middle East, strongest opposition comes not from liberal democrats but from those who seek to impose the most brutal form of Shariah law.
But what if we've all got it wrong? Well, not precisely wrong. Just a little off.
We can all agree that individual jihadist revolutions are awful and naturally ought to be opposed. Fascists must be fought. But let's assume a supposedly worst-case scenario, an overnight fait accompli of simultaneous Islamist revolutions stretching from Libya eastward to the borders of Iran, in which radical Islamists take power.
It sounds nuts at first, but such a speedy victory for the jihadists all at once might just be the death knell for political Islam shortly thereafter, when the money runs out.
I know what you're thinking. "The fastest way to bring down the jihadists is to let them take over the Middle East? Get your head out of your ass." But hear me out.
If the whole Arab Middle East goes for jihad at the same time, these regimes will shortly be deprived of the means for their survival, both from within the region and from without. It's like a massive fire that would burn itself out quickly - and with any luck, the rest of the world wouldn't get singed too badly by the experience.
We know that wherever Islamists take power, the country basically goes to hell. Witness the Iranian regime's decades-long persecution of its own citizens and export of terror; the Taliban's spectacular triumph of turning what seemed to be the worst place conceivable into a new level of Hell, utterly dependent on foreign aid to prevent mass starvation. Or Gaza's corruption of civil society, where dissidents are murdered in prison, women are arrested for witchcraft and girls do not dare to ride a bicycle. Or Somalia's al Shabab's hacking off of limbs for watching soccer or not wearing mullah-approved robes.
The most extreme Islamist power brokers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are propped up by oil revenues. Gaza is kept afloat mainly by truckloads of aid from Western nations, such as the USA, EU and Israel.
These are unsustainable models. Basically, they depend on cash inflows from the West (and yes, to a lesser extent, Asia), either from oil or aid.
A contiguous block of openly jihadist states at war with the West would be unsustainable over the long term, presumably even over the short term. Populist Arab leaders may rail against the corruption of Western-style economic planning and "decadent" political systems. But if all of these nations implode at once thanks to Taliban-style governance, the Western money flows will be cut off and the Gulf states won't be able to bankroll these basket cases.
It's not comparable with Germany trying to keep the rest of the EU crowd in the game after Greece and Portugal default on debts -- it's more like Italy or Spain bearing that burden. The ponzi scheme might be over in days, not years.
How long would the people of the Arab world be willing to live under Taliban-type regimes? Weeks? Months? Years? If they thought the secret police were bad, it's hard to see how that type of regime plus mass starvation would deliver satisfaction.
Perhaps only then the allure of the Islamist state or Caliphate will be understood as a mirage to the people of the Middle East. You thought secular dictatorships were bad? Try a religious one. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, perhaps after they've tried every other political system, they'll be willing to fight for the least worst form of government.
It was once said that Communism had to constantly expand in order to survive. Political Islamism of the Hezbollah or Taliban variety suffers from a different internal contradiction - if it actually did expand to take over the Arab world, its conquest would quickly have to go into reversal. The West and the rest of the world are simply too powerful now to have to give in to some sort of medieval protection racket. And if whacko jihadists decide to jack up the price of oil to astronomical levels to stick to the Great Satan and his buddies (while pissing off all of their other customers, such as China), outsiders will do what they feel they must to keep their own oil-dependent economies from imploding; come in with guns blazing and set up their own oil wells, if need be.
If the most extreme jihadists manage to seize power throughout the region and truly divide the world into a House of Islam and a House of War - that war is going to come home very quickly, either from within or without. Hopefully, from within, from a population suddenly very much aware of what radical political Islam means - and suddenly transformed into its most bitter opponents.
Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist
